The context surrounding this election — representing drastically different, competing economic ideologies between Hillary and Bernie — is largely unknown or misunderstood by most Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, but in my mind means everything in this race.
These differences aren’t small, and they’ve drastically changed the country in the past 40 years.
This blog explains it all. I can’t urge people more strongly to give it a read.
Please share widely!
…but misses the mark regarding analysis of the current race, though I think the mark of competent candidates and parties is to adjust to current political and economic realities. I for one was very much a DLCer in the 1990s, but also more of a New Dealer today. Of course I tend to be of the competence, not ideology, school when it comes to the presidency. That said, I disagree with the amount of daylight between the candidates that the author asserts and you apparently agree with.
Ahh, the DLC was anti-welfare, pro DOMA, pro war-on-drugs and most offensively pro-invasion of Iraq. Since you often chose Wiki to buttress you opinion, her is what they say about the DLC: The DLC gave strong support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
If you have an iota of knowledge about Iraq during the past two decades, you know that she was not part of the “competence” school. We in the competence school said there were no WMDs in Iraq, that we needed to keep the secular Bathists engaged (rather than throw them under the bus as she did), that her vote to topple Saddam would empower Iran. Yes, I was there during the war. Where were you?
..but much more forgiving about the Iraq vote which I personally opposed. I’m loathe to argue with the successes of Clinton-era policies, however.
I am glad Bernie is finally getting some time in the media, but coverage of the horse race has often been missing the point. They are talking about small differences or scrutinizing policy proposals, discussing what or if there is a difference between the two. As a left-wing independent whose career is several decades in the making, a paradox of independence and experience, and with no similar person even close to his position, Bernie is a unique once in a lifetime opportunity to shed the cowardly right-wing appeasing position of the U.S. Democratic Party. No amount of lip service on the issues from the opposition will change that.
And of course it helps that he is right on surveillance, prisons, war, health care, and education funding, is the only candidate to understand and stress that campaign finance reform must come first, and is the only candidate to treat climate change as the greatest threat facing us.
It was too bad he wouldn’t come out and call Obama a moderate at the debate.
Hardly. Well-written, thoughtful, sure. Hardly a game-changer.
We elect people to serve as President, not ideologies.
The past may be prologue, but it’s not destiny. Times change, and so do people.
What Presidents want to do and what they can do are two different things.
Candidates belong to parties. In the general election, voters elect them to represent them.
Actually, in modern history, whenever party realignments have occurred, it’s often been in great part because of who was elected.
So… with all due respect… I’m not so sure what you say here is true.
Candidates can and have remade parties in their image. Many times.
or at least willing to debate. Who are you thinking of in modern history?
The follow up question would be, what makes Bernie one of these guys?
Less cryptically…
In general elections, it won’t be democratic ideology that gets our candidate elected. Ideology might play a part, but it’s less rational than that.
Hillary may have been a DLC person in the 1990s. I was certainly a centrist. (My favorite senator was Sam Nunn). I believe that Hillary understands that the country has changed and problems are different. I understand other don’t agree with me. That’s okay. I don’t think any of us truly knows. Same thing with Bernie: he doesn’t have Hillary’s experience and might not have what it takes to do the sausage-making. Do I know this? There’s no way I can.
Candidates change because they represent a diverse number of people, not just a political party. I know we tend to think of this as selling out, but honestly, I think elected people usually have to change to represent their constituents. The great politicians are those who can do what the electorate doesn’t know they want.
that elected Richard Nixon, who almost passed bills that would give everyone health care and a guaranteed minimum income, not all that long before him… and turned it into a party that was neoliberal at its core.
Bill Clinton cemented the party as neoliberal, too, with a ‘can’t beat him, join them,’ strategy. (And, yes, Jimmy Carter moved the party a little in this direction, but Bill truly cemented it.)
FDR is another.
I’m not saying these politicians made their parties move 100% in their direction, or introduced whole new ideologies in them, but they made those ideologies the dominant viewpoint in those parties for decades.
If Bernie wins the nomination, you’re going to see an awful lot of Democrats move in his direction, and a lot of people non-incumbents running for office running as “Bernie Democrats.” And as President, he’d have a massive influence in the way the party is run and what it supports as a political entity, able to make a new platform, able to get new leaders in at the DNC, etc. etc. etc.
How much of an impact did Obama have on changing the trajectory of the Democratic Party? How many downballot Democrats ran with him or away form him? I celebrated Bernie’s win and frankly feel Hillary and her supporters should wake up and quit assuming he will eventually hit a wall, they have to fight for this nomination and should start doing so today.
That said, I still can’t picture how he will govern or what aspects of his record stand out to you as showing a keen executive judgment and capability of producing the kinds of coalitions that change country’s and move millions. After the campaign it’s a lot harder, as the last great liberal
hope has shown us for 8 years. Not saying it won’t be better with Bernie, but you really have drunk the kool aid and have stopped evaluating him in a reality based way. The same can be said for many Clinton supporters, but I want to hold all of us to a higher standard of rigor.
n/t
That’s the point. Neither did GWHB and GWB for Republicans, after Reagan.
We’ve continued along the same path since 1980 for the GOP and 1992 for Democrats. There have been a few minor shifts here or there, but no fundamental course changes or 180s.
Who knows if we can? We may well not be able to get much if anything through Congress — but that’s true of BOTH Democrats running for President. Congress won’t pass Hillary’s progressive bills, they haven’t for Obama and they’re certainly not going to for the one candidate they hate as much as Obama. The only thing under Hillary that a Speaker Ryan would pass is stuff that makes me shudder (the European version of TPP that’s in the works, for example).
I do, however, think Bernie has a far better shot at electing large numbers of new democrats. Bernie’s ability to tap into young voters suggests he has the ability for a high voter turnout, and his capacity to reach demographics that the Democratic Party has lost for a long time (ie gun voters) bodes well for unseating Republicans in some unexpected places — particularly since many of these gerrymandered districts are designed for Republicans to win by 5 or 10 points, not 20 or 30.
It still may not be possible to undo all the gerrymandering damage that Republicans have done until demographics have sufficiently changed… but by all indications Bernie has a better shot at it than Hillary, who is deeply mistrusted by independent voters — and has been for decades now.
Your attack on his judgment, when it’s Hillary who’s made the bad calls and Bernie’s been the one right on just about all the big issues that have faced in country in the past 20 years, is astounding. He’s not some “whacky” guy — he’s a guy who’s been right where the establishment’s been wrong time and time again. Deregulation, Iraq, minimum sentencing, spying on citizens…. Bernie hasn’t just been right on all these things where the establishment (including Hillary) has been wrong, he’s been prescient about them. He told the establishment how they’d be wrong before it even happened, whether it was his Iraq war speech, or when he questioned Alan Greenspan in Congress, and he was right.
And Sanders is the one who’s judgment should be called into question?
In terms of what he’d do with his executive powers, this is EXACTLY why we need to elect Bernie. He’d hire watch dogs to to the FCC, FDA, SEC and Federal Reserve. Hillary would install industry execs through the DC-Wall St revolving door. He’d curtail spying on the public where Hillary voted for the PATRIOT Act. Bernie would stop writing terrible trade deals which have destroyed millions of American jobs, Hillary called the TPP the “golden standard” before she realized it would cost her the election.
If we can’t have a Congress who can pass progressive legislation, then we better have a President who will appoint a bunch of watch dogs and non-industry experts and wield the tremendous powers of the office with a progressive vision.
started with Barry Goldwater, according to Matt Taibbi. The Party increasingly became home to the righ-wing after the civil rights bills. There were liberal and moderate wings of the GOP, which have gradually disappeared, but crediting Reagan with these changes is what I think of as the pathetic fallacy.
Jimmy Carter started the neo-liberalism, but he was shorted with one term. Bill Clinton was also the apotheosis of neo-liberalism, not a cause. Things were happening at the state level and the DLC began in 1985 in the wake of Mondale’s loss. Neo-liberalism was in play in the states before that. Dukakis was a neo-liberal.
I think this is where we diverge on theories of change. Presidents certainly embody ideology and shape it, but by the time they embody it in the Oval Office, it’s been floating around for a while and permeating it. If Bernie is elected, he’ll be credited with bringing the party to the left, but that party will have already been there to bring the party left. Chicken? Egg? Just really complex.
Winner-Take-All Politics
How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
In an innovative historical departure, Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got under way, taxes were cut for the wealthiest, and business decisively defeated labor in Washington. And this transformation continued under Reagan and the Bushes as well as under Clinton, with both parties catering to the interests of those at the very top. Hacker and Pierson’s gripping narration of the epic battles waged during President Obama’s first two years in office reveals an unpleasant but catalyzing truth: winner-take-all politics, while under challenge, is still very much with us.
For example shipping goods got faster, more reliable, and cheaper.
Flying got more convenient (many more flights) and cost much less.
There were no more gas shortages.
how deregulation affected any of these things.
Deregulation as a concept isn’t necessarily bad, though lack of and resistance to regulation of shadow banking nearly wrecked the planet’s economy.
When I hear talk of deregulation I want to ask what health and safety protections aren’t important to you.
book. I wholeheartedly endorse it.
History is as complex as society. We distort it when attribute too much effect to individuals.
That’s why I’m a Sanders supporter. It’s the economy. I don’t bash Hillary Clinton, and she may well be the nominee. If elected she will be better than ANY of the republicans and hold back the worst of the GOP excesses. But in the primary I will vote my priorities, pure and simple. Economic inequality, and the structures that are making it worse, trump other issues. I can only hope that Hillary is learning from her opponent, but people I talk with see no evidence that she will prioritize these issues. BTW, I’m glad this was posted. This blog came across my Facebook feed a few days ago and I shared it immediately. Great explanation of the problem. I respect people who say that identifying problems is not the same as solving them, but it’s a first step.
Great clarifying post & comments. Thanks Rye and Mark. You both made me think hard.